


The Evolution of Pride

by ObliObla



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexuality, Gen, Hell, Introspection, Pride, Queer Themes, Stars, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-19 04:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19968055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla
Summary: Lucifer invented it, or near enough.Lucifer Bingo prompt: anathema





	The Evolution of Pride

**Author's Note:**

> Finally getting the Pride fic out...a month late. But every month is Pride month if you believe hard enough?
> 
> Maybe?

Lucifer invented it, or near enough. After all, what Father had was only ever expectations waiting to be fulfilled. And his siblings… Well, what _they_ did for Mother and Father was only duty, wasn’t it? There was no pride in them for their works, for none of those things truly belonged to them.

But the stars… The stars were different.

How could he _not_ be proud of their light, so much purer and more alive than any other he’d seen, drawn from his very soul to bring their luster to a dark universe. Desire in their fiery hearts to shine, to spin, to dance through an empty void always, _always_ trying to take away their sheen.

But his stars were as stubborn as he was—as headstrong, as beautiful—and though they would slow or cool or else burn out in a blaze of glorious incandescence, their deaths were never in vain, would only feed the brilliance of later stars. He would never let himself forget how each of them once gleamed.

* * *

There was always something different about him, and it intrigued and frightened him in equal measure. Something his siblings didn’t understand. Something his Mother encouraged only for her own ends. Something his Father refused to admit existed.

And he would wonder, sometimes, whether there was some defect in him, some flaw that made him think and feel in ways sometimes strange. But then he would look down at the vast tapestry of stars blazing in the stillness—the only sparks of vibrancy in all Creation besides Heaven itself—and the warmth of pride would bloom within him, insulating his soul from the cold and vacant serenity of the Silver City.

And that fire maintained him as his purpose was made cruel and wanton, and he rejected its darkness, finding himself lost to it regardless. Grasping as the light and failing it.

Pride, then, came before destruction, and his spirit so haughty before he was falling, down and down and further still into the tenebrous, raucous chaos.

* * *

But pride did not abandon him, even as he was wreathed in flames that twisted and tore and rent from him all that he was and had ever been, leaving him hollowed, yet refined.

For nothing purified quite like fire, and nothing seared as deeply as the flames of Hell, leaving him soot ridden on a burning shore. And he emerge from those ashes made new by the pain of loss and betrayal, but also by the glory of truth and self-acceptance.

And his pride became for the kingdom he’d wrested from the shadows. He had been denied the light, and so he found instead the beauty and glory in darkness.

* * *

She was beautiful as she walked in the garden, tending to the trees, filled with a light that rivaled his stars—one whose splendor he’d nearly forgotten in eons of ash and shadow. And when he asked her of what she yearned for deep within herself, they were both lost to the overwhelming brilliance of desire. And the other, he was beautiful as well, when she brought him forth to behold, shining with that selfsame light. He was asked the same, and he answered, and desire bloomed anew.

And it was paradise.

But then they sewed clothing from fig leaves—the fruit so ripe as to be bursting—and storm clouds gathered in the east. And when the voice of his Father came down as a mighty earthquake and cast them out as he had been, they were left to the sand and the darkness and the fire.

And his pride twisted to the vainglory of corruption, though he had intended nothing so grand, drawing the light of day toward shadow, pulling others down with him into the night.

* * *

He knelt on a beach in a place named for angels as his wings—his very grace, the supposed source of all that light that had kindled the stars—were cut away in pain and ichor and bitter victory. The sun sank beneath the waves and the faint traces of stars appeared, but his own shine only dulled as divinity was made mundane, glory dimmed into so much shadow.

It was, perhaps, an act of destruction, but the flames of renewal came again on a hellish blade, and he was glad for the agony, staring up at his ancient works and feeling an echo of that long ago pride.

And it was tainted, somewhat, by the source of that cruel light, as the wings were, but he would take pride in whatever he could wrest from the darkness. And this act, _this_ defiance couldn’t ever be taken away from him.

* * *

The wings came back.

He had chosen— _chosen freely_ —to sever that awful light, and the choice was taken from him. His chains crafted from feathers weighed him down, dragging him into the depths where he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but feel the heft of celestial manacles breaking his back.

He took up the knife. Again. Again. _Again._ And there was pride, however twisted, in that devastation, the blood spilling from his back a bittersweet defiance. An ache glittering with jagged sharpness like the brightest of stars.

But even that was taken from him.

He looked in the mirror, watching them shine and felt the nausea rise again, hiding them away but still feeling them cut deeper than knives, burrowed down to rend at what was left of his soul.

* * *

The wings were bloodied and bullet-marked, but only in their battered state had he found true pride for them again. Pride that he could protect. Pride that he could be righteous still, could take the light of another and turn it toward his own ends.

Parts of himself he never thought could exist in harmony came together—his given purpose fulfilled, his chosen one likewise—but then the darkness came again, as it always had, as it always _would_ , and pride soured to fear and sorrow and shame.

* * *

But pride had always sustained him, even when he’d been cast from the light all those eons ago, and this was but shadows to that boundless abyss. And so from the depths he emerged again, as he had before, as he would again, wrenching joy from sorrow with the vibrant gleam that had brought empyreal fire to the hearts of stars.

And it was a shallow pride, at times, even as that light and beauty he had discovered first in the garden returned, though darkly from a far more shattered glass.

But there was glory yet in imperfection, and he knew better than anyone the beauty in broken things.

* * *

And pride again came before a fall.

But not a vainglorious pride, nor a shallow one. One as pure as starlight and as warm as the sun’s rays caressing his skin. And so he went back into the darkness, but brought the light down with him, sustained by the flames in his heart, by the incandescence of his soul.

Hellfire scorched him to ashes anew, but what remained was stronger wrought than had come before, impurities rendered away. Though he was not left hollowed and empty, but running over with incalescence, shining brighter than he ever had.

And there _had_ been pride before the fall, but the pride that came after was a star not blazing into supernova, nor burnt into a cold husk, but phosphorescent and steady as the morning sun rising over the mountains, bringing light to another day.


End file.
